Uluru

Hi Everyone – Wishing everyone a happy new year!
It’s great to hear of people reading our blog. Unfortunately I can’t edit or view any of the videos we’ve captured so far – I will however try to upload unedited clips if they are nice and small. Below are some photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/20101231?authkey=Gv1sRgCMv26rqm39mxyAE#

There is no way it can get any hotter

Oh my. words can not describe. We’re stopped in a caravan park (or dirt car park with toilet block) at William Creek. Temperatures are 38.7 at 7PM… 46.5 is the max. You would already know this as you’ve probably seen our spot message. Provided the car is running, the fridge has no problem keeping the 3 degree temperature, but within an hour it’s exhausted it’s dedicated battery. We’ll need to run the car for a bit tonight to get it back down to temperature.

We’re staying in William Creek because we got a puncture on the Oodnadatta track. We did everything right, kept speeds down, kept tyre pressures down (which is hard carrying a load) but got one anyway. And there is no surprises that it was the rear left tyre.

The Pub\Fuel Station\Tyre Repairer\Caravan Park operator will only repair the tyre in the dark because the tyre machine is broken and he has to do it by hand.

I’m sitting in what feels like a hay shed writing this blog – the heat radiating from the roof is intense – why the hell am I here. It’s one thing to be in an uncomfortable place for work, or purpose, but why did I choose to come here?!

As I was lining up an ‘end of the tar’ photo, thinking we were all hardcore, a 40-50 year old guy on a pushbike rolled on past. Wow, we are really soft.

  

 
We needed to re-inflate the punctured tyre so the jack would have enough reach to fit the spare on (I’ve made that mistake before)

 
There was no way to purchase tickets on the hover-bus, not sure how they can expect to be profitable without charging for the service. I am honest so I chose not to fly rather than flying for free.

This was one of those – woah moments. 9m below sea level. Um. Well after 2 seconds I remembered that Lake Eyre is below sea level.

  Coward Springs – Oh this was so good.

I don’t think I’ve ever paid this much for fuel… this was a $95 fill up.

More tomorrow.

Last mobile coverage until Alice Springs

We’ve just been told by Tracey in the service station at Leigh Creek, that Telstra NextG is the only network for about another 15KM out of Leigh Creek … until Alice springs. We’ve not had Vodafone for the last day.

We had a great sleep last night, and everything is going well. We’re heading on the Oodnadatta track to Oodnadatta. We’ll be stopping at coward springs for a wash.

Here is a photo of Cassie reading this post before it goes live. And some pictures of our awesome camp from last night.

You’ll be able to track our progress on our Spot page via our satellite messages. It doesn’t seem to have our last ‘I’m OK’ messages, but you’ll be able to see future ones.
http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0YhbQ34dQy24t45Ck1pRZI2NiHCYc8NXc

Lots of love – us.

PS. Brett the amazing spotted a Darth Vader in cassies shadow in the sand – epic observation.
Thanks for the comments people.

Totally disconnected

We have driven about 440km today from Burra. Not a huge distance but we had to have another look at the front wheel bearings both this morning before we started and again when we stopped for some lunch, which took up a little bit of time.

We’re about 60km outside of a town called Leigh Creek – not sure how much of a town it is considering the last “town” we “drove through” was simply a public toilet block, 3 houses and a hotel. It did have a sign saying fuel and I think I remember driving past a lone fuel pump next to the hotel – no E10, Premium or Vortex fuel out here, just petrol or diesel. Apparently in about 200 or so kms we’ll be going past a fuel station located in Lyndhurst that is the last supplier of LPG in the northern part of South Australia.

We’re feeling quite remote and disconnected from everything and everyone we know now because we have no mobile reception, no mobile broadband connectivity and near no town of any significance. It’s 6pm and we’ve been sitting on the shady side of our car at our camping spot for about an hour now, waiting for the heat of the day to dissipate. In that time I can almost count on one hand how many cars have passed us in the near distance on this highway B83. We’ve been following the Flinders Ranges on our right for some time now and they’re absolutely lovely. Considering the land is so flat out here we have a very clear view of them in the distance.

It’s like being in another country out here. The plants look different, the roads look different, the land looks different. We’ve had two separate police persons wave to us from their cars as we passed them and a number of locals waving to us from their cars too along the way today. However we cant spot a trend between those who wave and those who don’t.

We should hopefully have connectivity with our mobile broadband within the vicinity of the next few towns (next day or so) to upload this blog. Otherwise you may be reading a couple of our entries at once.

Looking forward to starting the Oodnadatta Track tomorrow.

Till then, Cassie

OK my turn.

There is a certain peace that comes from being ‘away from it all’ but in the same respect, for people that are of a generation that is continually connected in some way or another, this also is an unsettling feeling. You might say from the comfort of your houses that you’d love it, but the isolation for us feels quite threatening. We have not felt unsafe at any stage, but we do feel a little homesick.

About 15 minutes before we reached our current destination for the night, we turned in to Parachilna. It was like Cassie described, but when you see the typical camp, food, fuel, phone sign you think your in for a little town.
To see the shipping container is your fuel station and an old payphone box as your means of communication, you can’t help but think you’re on the moon. I’m quite confident we will overcome the shock of this all, but at the same time, hesitant to proceed in the event you need a part or tool, - it’s days away. To top it off, when leaving Parachilna, we were greeted with a sign ‘Parachilna – a taste of the outback’… in our current state of mind, it was a bit of a punch to the confidence that this is only a taste of things to come.

There’s a certain comfort that comes from the car. It does everything for us, shelter, transport, accommodation, food and ultimately security. The thought of anything going wrong with it occupies my mind continually. Any  change in sound, gauges, vibrations or general feeling is a great cause for alarm. On our first day’s driving, the car would get hot if we were sitting still for too long. Naturally this was never a problem when we’re cruising along because it got heaps of airflow. I’d struck this once or twice in the past, but thought it was just from working too hard with no airflow. I thought the clutch fan was slipping even though it felt ok, I thought the water pump was failing, it felt ok. I thought the thermostat might be sticking, but it seemed ok.  (I bought a spare one anyway).
Turns out, as a final ‘i dunno’ gesture, I ran the heater flat out and it blew cold air! within 30 seconds, it was hot again and the temperature problem disappeared. Sounds like air lock? David would be happy with a problem that fixed itself, so there ya go - three days later and the gauge never gets above half way.

Still can’t find the source of the oil leak, it just feels like engine oil, but the level isn’t going down. It almost feels like the oil is too thin and at these temperatures it just leaks? I think it has 10W-40 in it, which is maybe a bit thin. I may not have noticed before because I changed it in winter. The car is my only stress.

Excuse this post if it gets a bit long winded, but it’s taking forever for the sun to get low enough to cool down.

On the upside, we are getting much better at the whole camping thing. We take minutes to setup, cook, wash up and get to sleep, and minutes to wash ourselves in the morning and be ready to go. We’re making a habit of having breakfast either at a nice cafe or on the road or once we’ve developed an appetite.

An example of our improved camping skills is the development of our flyscreens.
On the first night we somewhat sweated in the back of the car with no breeze it quickly becomes stale.
On the second night, we fashioned some rough flyscreens segments held in place by doors, taped over the back windows.
On the third night we perfected some made to measure flyscreens which look like they came on the car.
Now we can have perfect air flow with no risk of those pesky mosquitoes.

Here is our camp for tonight – as usual, parked off the road out of sight – but totally disconnected.

Not exactly a super day

It seems fair to share the bad times as well as the good.

Cigarette lighter double adaptor blew a fuse – a 6amp fuse. I have a 5 amp, 10, 15, 20, 25 & 30 amp fuses.

After confirming there wasn’t anything wrong and this was the typical load of the attached devices, I thought, I don’t want to put in a 10 in case there is a problem, it won’t blow soon enough, so I put in a 5 in the hope it may have just covered it, well – it did, for about 30 minutes.

As a continuation of last night, my epically unreliable Telstra Prepaid USB broadband ran out of credit last night… after a total of 20MB downloaded since purchase. It had like $60 of credit on it!

Went to McDonalds for breakfast, used their epically slow Wi-Fi to upload our blog and download Picasa. after about 45 minutes that was done. All this time on hold with Telstra.

Turns out you cannot activate prepaid mobile broadband online, you can only activate prepaid mobile phones.
So all of my credit was consumed at the 30cents a kilobyte, not $1.60/MB…. only to be told that I had used that credit and it would not be returned. After explaining the situation to a completely unsympathetic international lady, she managed to refund me 4GB of data, assuring me that was much more than the $60 I loaded it with – somehow I doubt it. Waited on hold for 30 minutes for the complaints line which I suspect I was being deliberately stalled on.

Camera for the second time won’t connect until I take the battery out of it !? actually – make that continually unable to connect. It won’t copy a few photos, and naturally the SD card reader in the laptop is also fail. ugh.

Also noticed when parked, as part of my daily check to find oil on everything from the bell-housing, transfer, propeller shafts, diff that seems to be dripping and blowing backwards as we drive. damn. When we were stopped we noticed around 5 drops of oil on the ground. The drops are primarily beneath the bell-housing. Feels like maybe an oil seal at the back of the engine. I’ve been keeping tabs on the oil every time we get fuel and it’s not using any whatsoever.

Since Canberra we’ve noticed a slight bearing noise, so I picked one up today in the event it could ever need replacing – somewhat of a spare.  Was having a great drive today and around the 300KM mark  we swapped drivers we realised an awful sound coming from the passenger front wheel when we started off again. The bearing sounded like it had collapsed – almost like metal in a blender.
Pulled over and replaced it but seemingly the bearing noise is gone, but the crunching is still there.

I put the transfer in 4H (not locked) which is just like All-Wheel-Drive. The noise stopped. Hmm. – Diff oil perhaps? It’s always seeped from either end of the axel where the CV’s are, but just checked it, nope, it’s full. So tomorrow we were planning to see the local mechanic. However he’s not due back until the 10th…

When changing the bearing I noticed that I couldn’t find the split ring that holds the shaft in place (to stop it coming too far out, or too far in) but in the shards of metal, assumed it got eaten up. After dinner I gave this some thought – perhaps the absent split-ring was allowing the shaft to go too far in and causing the CV’s to bind up and that putting it in AWD kept tension on the splines making it less likely to fall in and out. See the picture to the right – all the bearings fell out in my hand!

In the dim light after dinner, we took the hub cap off to see if we could hold the shaft in place with some wire in place of the split ring, but found it inside the hub (it stands to reason it couldn’t have got chewed up, because it’s on the other side of the hub). Before putting it back in place, I pushed on the shaft and noticed it can go quite a way in – perhaps this could be the problem?! We’ve put the split ring back and took it for a quick drive, and seemingly no problem. We’re desperately trying to not get our hopes up, but it’s possible this may have fixed it.

If this doesn’t fix it, I’ll try removing the hub’s, one at a time, and then both to see if there is a differential problem. Worst case, this will enable us to drive to a proper repairer or home…

Wait, the up arrow on the keyboard has stopped working too… not exactly a super day.

Eating up the miles

Well today we’ve done over 700KM (Can’t actually tell you without checking) but we’re about 20km east of Mildura.

Photos

So we had a coffee and breakfast in a fantastic place in Wagga Wagga – seemed to be the only place open. Wagga was simply stunning – so much more than I had expected. Fantastic wide, clean streets. Brand name stores, just a lovely country town, but not missing anything that a city would have.

We’re feeling really fresh and alert regardless of the distances, it’s certainly easy driving. We take every opportunity to stop and take photos.

We stumbled across Ron Clarke Steel Craftsman (or similar) next to the BP service station at Waddi.
To those who are not obsessed with the works of Charlie Boorman – he dropped in to this Ron Clarke guy in ‘By any means’. Maybe it’s just the celebrity connection, but either way I was soo impressed to just stumble upon this landmark – purely by chance!

We’ve stopped maybe 500M off the main highway, and the road instantly turned to this beautiful rich red sand.

I’m trying to upload a video of us preparing dinner. Home food is sooo good. You seem to feel far away from home when you’re continually eating foreign food, not hand made etc. However a simple sausages, mashed potato, gravy – so good. Sorry this post was late – fail Telstra… but more about that in the next post.

Our first camp of the trip

So we’ve stopped outside of Wagga Wagga and setup camp – we’ve now had dinner and just waiting for it to get dark enough to sleep.

We spent Christmas lunch at my parent’s house and left there at around 3.30pm. Thanks to everyone for our awesome Christmas gifts. We are a spoilt pair!

I’m feeling absolutely kaput right now – I think it’s due to the crazy lead up to this trip with all the organising, late nights and packing and now that we’re finally on the trip I’m totally drained! I’m sure I’ll pick up again tomorrow after a great night’s sleep. Looking forward to testing the sleeping arrangement in the back of the car.

The drawer setup in the back of the car is working a treat – thank you SO MUCH for all of your help with this Gary. We seriously couldn’t have done it without your help and workshop. And Graeme with his new found welding skills has knocked up a great steel frame.

It was raining quite heavily as we were driving this afternoon and it eased up a bit as we were setting up camp. Thankfully it’s now stopped and we’re enjoying being outside in the fresh, cool air. We rigged up a makeshift shelter for the back of the car so we could pull the drawers out and cook without us and our gear getting wet. It kept us dry and that’s all that matters.

As we were driving along the Hume Hwy at Gundagai, Graeme suddenly (but safely) jumped on the brakes and yelled “ROOF RACK!!” I jumped out and picked up this lone roof rack that had obviously fallen off a car at some point. Funny thing is, we needed one of those to attach our tarp to so we could make an awning if it rained. Hopefully it’s not broken and we can attach it to the car in the morning. If we can I’ll be waiting for someone to ask us, “Did you  lose a roof rack” because then we can say “Nah mate, we found one!”. They’ll think we’re totally weird and it’ll be worth the laugh.

Graeme’s off trying to get a photo of a couple of hares we saw hopping around near us earlier. Lol you won’t believe this but it’s actually right behind me now as I type – just hopped to within 15 feet of me. I think he just got his photo.

Can’t wait to get into more travelling in the morning. And the best bit is…we don’t know and don’t mind where we end up this time tomorrow evening.

Cheers, Cassie

First Laptop Post

OK – So we’re using Windows Live Writer, an offline blogging tool that allows us to prepare our posts offline, and submit them when we get online.
I’ve prepared a video of our setup just as another test. Hope you enjoy our journey.

Before anyone says anything about the strap holding the jerry cans – it’s been replaced with two ratchet straps.

Our Camper Setup